


Demon Barberess, Corpse Artist

by Bookhearted_Baggins, Zero_Lancer



Category: Fate/Zero
Genre: ? - Freeform, F/M, Gore, Horror, Love Story, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Romance, Rory this is your fault and I fuckin love it, Sweeney Todd AU, Thriller, bless my frickin stars
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-13
Packaged: 2018-01-24 16:30:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1611818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bookhearted_Baggins/pseuds/Bookhearted_Baggins, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zero_Lancer/pseuds/Zero_Lancer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sweeney Todd AU: Arturia Saber is the best barber in London, anyone could tell you that... except for, maybe, her dead clientele. In order to help out her psychotic business partner Gilgamesh with his cannibalism-based London pie shop, Saber occasionally murders clients and sends them down to the depths to be dealt with (and made deceptively delicious). Arturia's never been squeamish about killing an awful client or two... until one day, she finds one she likes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Demon Barberess, Corpse Artist

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so my dork friend got me involved in Fate/Zero two days ago when we marathonned every episode of F/Z in less than 24 hours, and we've been discussing headcanons back and forth for days, so here's my first addition to the fandom :) I hope everyone enjoys!  
> XOXO- BHB

It’s an average London day; skies grey with rain clouds and smog from the factories, everyone dressed in their dull overcoats and shawls and bonnets and pocket-watches, going about their daily routines in such a mechanic fashion, it were as if they had no ambition, no passion, no hobby: which, in reality, was most likely true.  
  
Arturia Saber, however, didn’t really care. No, that was more Gilgamesh’s passion, as their routines (mechanic and boring as they were) were deciding factors in his line of business. His pies depended on the taste buds, and tastes, of the average person. Again, it was none of her business.  
  
She just supplied the meat. A butcher, Gilgamesh had once called her, and she had scoffed angrily, had not spoken to him the rest of the day: a butcher’s job was impersonal and barbaric. Strip the fur and skin and scales; tear meat from bone, or, she shuddered to think, pierce the delicate flesh with hooks. Toss it in a freezer, handle it as indelicately as possible, as though living beings were not works of art to be treasured… eventual meals or not.  
  
No, Arturia would never be a _butcher_ , of all things. She preferred to think of her work as an art, just as Gilgamesh’s culinary skill was. It was simply temporary. Maybe her first kill had been butchery; she was an amateur back then, as all are when they first begin to learn their craft, but she had greatly improved since then. The last time she had slaughtered something was when her second favorite blade had snapped when it cut too quick through flesh and hit a bone wrong. She had almost bought an entirely new set of barber knives, but Gilgamesh gifted her one (though where he had pilfered it from, she had not a clue). After that particularly rough day, she had almost debated staining the floors a deep burgundy, just to save herself the trouble of mopping on particularly bad days, but talked herself out of it. After all, she so rarely spilled on the floor these days, and although she was doing well enough, she didn’t have that much extra money, and so the floors remained bare and charmingly scuffed.  
  
She felt as much as heard the unfamiliar pattern of footsteps quietly rumbling up the wooden stairway to her shop, and chose to ignore it, continuing to sharpen her knives absently as she stared out the window opposite the door. The grey light of day lit her parlor better than the sun would, the pale tones of day complimenting the equally dreary interior of her shop. She had thought about decorating, once or twice, but she had never been one for frivolities, and thus had no intention of casting that impression upon her pieces. The only items in the room were her table full of supplies, the reclining barber’s chair in the middle of the room: a large wooden chest by the door, where she kept clean linens, aprons and bibs when she bloodied up the rest: coat hooks hanging next to the doorway, above the chest, and a tall coat rack in the space next to her desk. The only semblance of decoration were the dirty golden lamps on the walls, which were there mainly because the old ones had rusted almost solidly to the wall, and Gilgamesh had an odd penchant for gold utilities, though Arturia had absolutely no idea just how Gilgamesh acquired such things. It weren’t as if he were much richer than her.   
  
She was broken involuntarily out of her reverie by the tinkling of the bell at the top of the door, alerting her that her next piece had arrived. She turned and smiled slowly for the man glancing around the room.  
  
He was tall, although most anyone could be considered tall compared to her petite five-foot frame, but he was especially so; around six foot, 185 centimeters if she wagered correctly. He wore a simple black suit and a high white collar, a cross dangling from around his neck.  
  
The priest, her mind murmured excitedly. Right on time.  
  
“Hello, you must be my 3 o clock, father Kotomine,” she said politely, walking to stand behind the chair. She motioned to it. “Please, take a seat, make yourself comfortable.” ' _It’ll be your last chance to_ _.'_  
  
Kirei Kotomine removed his jacket and hung it on the hook next to the door. He rolled up his sleeve mid-forearm as he turned toward her and smiled. It was not a nice smile except in the manner that it was meant politely, but it felt grimy underneath the surface, and she knew he withheld a vileness that she would love to expel from the Earth.  
  
She sharpened her knives. The gloves hid her small, deft fingers and thin, strong wrists.  
  
He sat in the chair, leaning back with a lofty air about him. Pompous, confident. Wicked. Unholy.  
  
“Everything up to here,” he brushed a finger from his adam’s apple to the messy ends of his sideburns. “I have to look my best for the church, after all.”  
  
 _'You’ll look best for the church in your prim white shirt, laying still in your coffin. You’ll look better steaming on the windowsill, just out of the oven,'_ Saber’s mind whispered wickedly to itself. _'Patience, patience! Patience, no mischief, no mess.'_  
  
Slowly she strolled around to his front, passing to his other side, observing the strong curve of his throat, the muscles pronounced against tight-stretched skin. His jaw was covered in minutely small, fine hairs of chestnut. Pale flesh flexed with the movement of jaw bone as he relaxed completely into the chair.  
  
She set her knives down on the table, and she smiled. Picking a linen bib from the table, she secured it snugly around his throat, unnoticeably laboring his breaths. Saber moved back to the supply table, dipped her fingers in the canister to gather up the shaving cream on her fingertips and slathered it evenly along his throat and neck, white and fluffy and deceptively innocent.  
  
She picked up her knives, and began.  
  
She made sure not to show her eagerness through haste, nor excitement through trembling fingers. She moved with paced precision, ridding his visage of the offending hairs, taking her sweet, merciful time.  
  
She slowly shaved him to perfection, checking that not a single remaining hair was left from neck to top of the jaw. His sideburns were cleaned up, perfectly straight, solid patches of hair reaching down to the center of the ear on either side.  
  
She leaned over his left shoulder, examining the stretch marks on his still distended throat.  
  
“Ah,” she murmured, voice slow and calm. “The finishing touch,” she whispered, watching him shiver as her breath passed over his earlobe. She reached around to his front, knife secured firmly in her grasp, and pressed it gently to the far side of his neck. A tiny frown appeared in Kotomine’s brow.  
  
She proceeded to dig the knife into his throat and quickly drag it through convulsing skin, veins, nerves and meat. Crimson spewed forth eagerly, as if awaiting freedom, flying almost to the walls and dribbling like a brook down his front. Kotomine gurgled and convulsed violently, attempting to thrash his head from side to side, but Saber pressed down on his forehead, unwavering.  
  
“Have fun in Hell, holy man.” Saber murmured, allowing his head to drop to his chest when he stopped thrashing. Fine sprays of blood dotted the floor and his front, but thicker blotches painted the chair and his previously white collar grotesquely. The vile priest’s life source now dribbled down his front, not gushing so much as it was but still pumping.  
  
Saber pursed her lips, lifting the soaked red linen bib and untying it from Kotomine’s neck, balled it up and threw it on top of the chest next to the wall. Stepping back a few feet, she removed a single glove and tilted the coat stand forward, initiating the sound of several gears churning, opening up a chasm in the wooden floor. Kotomine’s corpse tilted back in the chair and fell into the chasm with a sickening, wet thud. Arturia lifted the coat rack back up, carefully avoiding her lovely navy blue woolen cloak.  
  
A moment later she heard stomping up the stairs to her shop, a short, successive melody of harsh knocks, and the one and only Gilgamesh poked his golden head through the door, grinning madly.  
  
“Another one? So soon?” he rubbed his pale hands together gleefully, attempting to warm them. His ruby eyes scanned the room, gazing excitedly at the bloodshed covering the shop. Saber nodded.  
  
“Priest Kotomine, the serial killer behind the Righteous Murders.” She pursed her lips and removed her other glove, tossing it into the bloody linen pile. “He’s tall and lean, muscular, so get a few good pies out of him. Make his crimes worth our while.” A fond smile curled Gilgamesh’s thin lips.  
  
“Tell me though, Arturia, my treasure,” he purred, striding and swiping the bloodied cloths from the top of the chest. He turned slowly toward the demon barber, who had since wiped her blades clean on the same rag she was cleaning the chair with.  
  
“If father Kotomine murdered convicted criminals, then why did we get rid of him? Wouldn’t he be doing us a service?” Gilgamesh questioned, perching himself on the edge of the chest. Saber snorted daintily, giving him a disdainful side-eye.  
  
“More like running us _out_ of service.” She tossed the rag down onto her desk, rummaging for her other knives. “Kirei Kotomine murdered those criminals for fun, to find his purpose, as determined by his absent excuse of a God. He murdered because he could, and he did so disgracefully, very messy. His file was abhorrent. I could have tracked him in a day,” she sniffed in distaste, turning to the window that gave her a view of the very much still grey and gloomy London rooftops. People passed below, blissfully unaware of the crime just recently committed right above their empty little heads.  
  
“Besides… killing criminals is my domain. It is my art, my skill, my pride and joy. Kirei Kotomine was… a _butcher_.” she scoffed quietly, glaring absently at the landscape. She sharpened her blades automatically, not even looking at the silvery flashes of razor sharpness. Gilgamesh sighed contentedly, threw a brown towel to the floor to mop of the minimalistic mess, and left with the bloodstained cloths. He cast a loving glance at Saber before descending into the hellhole that was his meat pie shop to deal with the latest dish.

Above, Saber sharpened her knives.


End file.
